The elitist attitude of the “arts industry” has so far tended to ignore so called public sentiment, unless it fits their interest.
I just learned about the case of the starving dog who was being exhibited, and I just signed the petition linked on this blog:
http://guillermohabacucvargas.blogspot.com/
The nutcase artist who brought the dog into the gallery…
Guillermo Habacuc Vargas http://artehabacuc.blogspot.com “I am 32 years old and an artist. Recently, I have been critisized for my work titled ‘Eres lo que lees’….”
…probably didn’t expect that people would react. He obviously strongly believes in alluding to Descartes’ “Cogito ergo sum” – the person who came up with the animal-machine model (just do a search on “animal-machine” and Descartes).
In the context the guy set up, the sentence: “you are what you read” implies a ranking made between different cognitive abilities. Implicitly he suggests that reading is better than not reading, because if you don’t “read” (books etc, ever), you can’t be anything at all.
Starving doesn’t matter to that guy, at least not when you are a dog.
And this is basically where the Cartesian link to “I think, therefore I am” is: Descartes excluded any other condition apart from thinking as worthy of being REALLY meaningful in any way.
The selfcenteredness of both a “human system” (the belief in the exclusive importance of cogniscance, because useful for …) and the selfcenteredness of the human herself “as-set-apart-from-nature”, is the connector here.
This type of inhumane activity which runs under the terms of arts can straightforwardly be perceived as an expression of human megalomania.